His cousin laughed softly, there in the darkness. “I just wanted you to think about a big radish up your arse, or whatever else Protomakhos might choose to do with you if he caught you with his wife.”
“Think? No!” Menedemos tossed his head. “What you wanted me to do was fall over dead from fright, and you almost got your wish.” His heart still thumped as if he’d run from Marathon to the city. But that wasn’t exertion he felt; it was the dregs of panic.
“Had you done nothing wrong, you wouldn’t need to fear,” Sostratos pointed out.
“When I was a little boy, my mother could talk to me that way,” Menedemos said. “I’m not a little boy any more, and my mother’s dead. And even if she were still alive, you aren’t her.”
“Someone needs to talk sense into you,” Sostratos answered, “or scare it into you if talking doesn’t work. Our own host-”
“Now that the Dionysia’s over, his wife and I are probably done, so stop fretting,” Menedemos said. “If he didn’t neglect her, she wouldn’t have looked at me, would she?”
“He doesn’t,” Sostratos said.
“And how do you know that?” Menedemos jeered. “I know what Xenokleia told me.”
“And I know what I saw the first day of the Dionysia, while you were still chasing other women through the city,” Sostratos retorted. “What I saw was Protomakhos coming downstairs from the women’s quarters with the look of a man who’s just enjoyed himself with a woman. How much truth was his wife telling you, do you suppose?”
“I… don’t know.” Menedemos muttered to himself. Xenokleia had certainly sounded convincing-but then, she would have, wouldn’t she? He tried to rally: “For all you know, Protomakhos bedded a slave girl, not his wife-if he bedded anybody at all.”
“The only married men who sleep with slaves in their own houses are fools,” Sostratos said, “Are you going to tell me Protomakhos is that kind of fool?”
“You never can tell,” Menedemos replied, but he knew the response was weak. As he’d said to Xenokleia, he didn’t think her husband was any kind of fool; by all the signs, the stone merchant was a very clever man. That being so, he went on, “I already told you-whatever happened between Xenokleia and me, which is none of your business-”
“It is if what you do lands us in trouble in Athens,” Sostratos broke in.
“It won’t, because we’re through. I told you that,” Menedemos said. “Now kindly get out of my room, where you had no business coming in the first place.” As Sostratos pushed past him-almost walked into him-going to the door, Menedemos added, “And don’t think I’ll forget this, either, because I won’t. I owe you one, and we both know it.”
“I quiver. I shudder. I quake.” Sostratos opened the door and closed it behind him. He didn’t slam it; that would have drawn attention to them. A moment later, his own door opened and then closed. The bar thudded into place.
Menedemos barred his door again. He lay down, wondering if he’d sleep after the fright Sostratos had given him. He also wondered how many lies he’d heard from Xenokleia. He’d told more than a few lies in his time to end up in bed-or leaning against a wall, or sitting on a stool, or in any number of other postures-with a woman. Having a woman lie to him for the same reason was-he thought-something new.
Why had she? To get sympathy? To make him angry at Protomakhos? He shrugged. It wasn’t likely to matter now. It had better not, he told himself. The Dionysia was over. Starting tomorrow, he would get down to business. And, no matter how enjoyable Xenokleia had been, he looked forward to it. He yawned, wiggled, stretched… and slept.
When he woke the next morning, rain was pattering down on Protomakhos’ courtyard. It was late in the season, but not impossibly late. He was glad the Aphrodite already lay tied up at Peiraieus; sailing in the rain was asking for trouble.
Menedemos and Sostratos emerged from their rooms at the same time. They both hurried to the andron. The Rhodian proxenos was eating bread and oil when they came in. “Good day, best ones,” he said after swallowing a bite. “The herbs and flowers will grow later than usual and better than usual this year.”
“And we’ll get muddy,” Menedemos said, looking down at his feet. They already had. A slave brought breakfast for him and his cousin. “I thank you,” he murmured, and began to eat.
“Fewer people will come to the agora on a day like today,” Protomakhos said. “You might want to stay here and take it easy till the rain eases up.”
Though Menedemos, for several reasons, wouldn’t have minded at all, Sostratos spoke up before he could: “Many thanks, most noble one, but we’d better go down to the ship and bring up some of our goods. If you could set aside a storeroom or two for them, we’d be in your debt even more than we are already. Much easier to do business out of Athens than to have to go back and forth to the akatos.”
“You’re diligent,” the proxenos said approvingly. “Men who work even when they don’t have to often go far. Let me talk to my steward, and we’ll see just which space we can set aside for you. You’ll have all you need, I promise you that.”
As the two Rhodians started down toward Peiraieus in the rain, Menedemos said, “By the dog of Egypt, Sostratos, I wasn’t going to sneak up to Xenokleia with her husband in the house. You didn’t have to drag me away by the ear like that.”
“So you say now,” his cousin replied. “For one thing, I didn’t want to take the chance. For another, we do need to get to work.”
“While it’s raining?” Menedemos skirted a puddle in which something nasty bobbed.
“What’s the easiest way to steal a victory?” Sostratos answered his own question: “To move faster than your foe. Look at Alexander, time and again. Look at Antigonos, when he used a forced march to fall on Eumenes before Eumenes even knew he was anywhere close by.”
“I’m not planning on spearing any Athenian merchants, only prying silver out of them,” Menedemos replied. Sostratos was in no mood to listen to banter. More often than not, Menedemos could lead his cousin. Today, he had to follow in Sostratos’ muddy wake.
They left Athens and made their way down to the great polis’ port between the Long Walls. The soldiers on those walls wrapped themselves in cloaks and capes and himatia. They still looked miserable up there. Menedemos felt pretty miserable himself. He was mud-splashed almost to the knee. So was Sostratos, but he ignored it. When Menedemos complained, all his cousin said was, “We’ve both got hats back at the Aphrodite. They’ll keep the rain out of our eyes when we go up to Athens again.”
“Hurrah,” Menedemos said sourly. “I’ve never yet seen a hat that will keep my legs dry, though. Almost makes me want to wear trousers like a Kelt.”
“Barbarous garments,” Sostratos said, which was certainly true, and then, “Besides, do you want to have wet, muddy wool flopping and flapping on your calves and thighs?” That was not only true but sensible-very much like Sostratos to manage both at once.
Few people were on the road down to Peiraieus, or, for that matter, coming up from the port, either. Without Sostratos’ dragging him out of Protomakhos’ house, Menedemos wouldn’t have been on the road, either. He glumly squelched along. To his relief and more than a little to his surprise, Sostratos didn’t nag him about seducing Xenokleia- not that she’d taken much seducing. Since it was also very much like his cousin to nag, he wondered why Sostratos was holding back now. He didn’t wonder enough to ask, though; that probably would have got Sostratos going.
They were already in the port and close to the wharves when Sostratos sighed and remarked, “I do sometimes wonder, my dear, if you’ll ever learn.”
Of course I learn. I can talk women into bed who would have ignored me when my line was rougher a few years ago. Menedemos came within a digit of saying that out loud. But it would have started the quarrel he didn’t feel like having, and so, reluctantly, he swallowed the words. He gave back a soft answer instead: “Look, you can see the Aphrodite’s mast and yard from here. I hope everything’s been all right while we were celebrating the Dionysia.”